£100m bill for migrant translations

More than £100 million of taxpayers' money is being spent each year on translation and interpreting services for migrants who do not speak English, according to a report.

BBC2's Newsnight totted up the figure from language services provided by local councils, hospitals, police forces, courtrooms and other state institutions across the UK.

On Tuesday night the programme said the bill was rising fast, with a 300% increase in spending on translation and interpreting over the past five years in the court system alone.

The report comes just days after Prime Minister Tony Blair made a high-profile speech saying that immigrants had a "duty to integrate" - including learning the national language.

Local Government Minister Phil Woolas admitted that he did not know the actual total being spent on translation, but insisted that it was far outweighed by the £1 billion being spent on teaching 1.8 million people to speak and write English.

Newsnight heard warnings from MPs that the provision of vast amounts of literature in dozens of languages left some migrants feeling there was no need to learn English.

Peterborough's Conservative MP, Stewart Jackson, said: "We have to ask the very basic question: is it necessary?

"And more importantly is it making people complacent and lazy that they can continue to speak in their homeland language without bothering to speak English? I think it is a very important question, particularly when taxpayers' money is going towards it."

Labour's Sadiq Khan (Tooting) told the programme: "I think it is worth us asking the question: are we now providing a level of translation that is too much and, rather than being an incentive for people to learn the English language, is a disincentive?.

"Are people becoming accustomed to a dependency culture where they know everything they ever need is going to be translated into their mother tongue?"